Kevin

Choose the layout of the highway with roads. (No picture, it’s too simple) Then, with street tiles, level out the area you want the highway to be. This must be 4 tiles wide, for optimum effects. My ground is completely flat, so I don’t have to worry. You only need it for 4 tiles, if you like to make overpasses, and to keep it simpler. Then, whip out the hole digging lots. Demolish the street tiles first, though. Choose the one that is called sunken. Plop it every other tile, on BOTH sides. Drag through with roads. Now you have a pit for your sunken highway. I didn’t finish mine, but you can fully do your network. Make sure to level those edges, with street tiles. I also want to transition one side to an avenue, later. You’re almost done, now. Just drag the highway through your pit, and you have the basics. You can add some eye candy to your highway, now. I used the sunken highway eye candy kit, (http://www.simtropol...sunken&type=all) and retaining walls (http://www.simtropol...=walls&type=all). Here’s an example with the sunken highway eye candy kit! Overpasses This works best with retaining walls, and Pjot's add-on. Search Pjot on the STEX, and download the add-on. I will construct a road overpass, but you can construct any kind. Just use the other kind of puzzle piece. You can even construct pedestrian overpasses with the “Ped mall” button. First, build the sunken highway. Then, in the roads menu, click on the road puzzle piece tool. Cycle through with the tab button, until you find the OnSlope puzzle piece. You can use either the T one, or use the straight one. It depends on the situation. Place this on both sides. Note how I demolished my eye candy sides. Then, click on the road puzzle piece button again. Cycle through with the tab key, until you find the road over highway piece. Plop that in the middle of the pieces you made before. You are done with that overpass! Check it out! It looks real nice doesn’t it! Well, let’s add the side eye candy again. This time, it’s with retaining walls. Well, here is an example with sunken highways. The areas are not developed yet, but they will! It’s much more complete, and hopefully it’ll give you ideas for your cities!

***Needs Anchor Links*** Part 1 Gameplay FAQ by Mazer327 General Questions How do I connect my road/rail/subway/water pipe/power line to a neighboring city?Why does it take so long for trees to grow?What are ZOTS? Where are my screen-captures saved?Why is the starting date 00?What does the RCI graph mean? What is Demand Cap?I am a SimCity guru; will I dominate SimCity 4?Why do sections of my city have the no work ZOT above their buildings when sections right next to it have work? Is it possible to import SimCity 3000 cities into SimCity 4? Terraforming Is there an easy way to reconcile edges on a map without messing everything you’ve already done up? Do trees grow into forests? Region Related I’ve been hearing the term “regional play”. What does this mean? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using regions? Do I have to use regional play? Should I put all RCI in one city or spread RCI across different cities? What works best? My neighboring connections aren’t letting me start neighbor deals! Why? Do I have to use my entire region to be successful? If I have 2 cities in my region and I am working on one of them, is the other one still growing? Why do sections of my city have the no work ZOT above their buildings when sections right next to it have work?How does RCI demand work in a region?If my sim commutes to another city to work, how does it determine commute times? Business Deals What are business deals?Should I accept every business deal that comes along?How do I get the Casino business deal?Do I need to run roads, water pipes and power lines to these buildings in order for me to get the money?What effects on my city do business deals have? General Questions Q: How do I connect my road/rail/subway/water pipe/power line to a neighboring city? A: Just drag the line to the edge of the screen. It will ask you if you wish to make a connection to the neighbor, simply click yes. Power, water pipe, road, rail, highway and subway connections to neighbor. Q: Why does it take so long for trees to grow? A: Trees, just like in real life, take a while to reach their full height and size. Depending on the location of the trees, they will either create more trees as time goes on, or will die off. Each type of tree can live in different locations. Depending on the amount of water they get, the height they are placed at and the wind direction in the city, you will get different trees. If you wish, you can place some trees at the terraforming stage, speed up time and watch a ’natural’ forest begin to flourish and expand. Q: What are ZOTS? A: ZOTS are the icons that appear above people’s houses when there is a problem. ZOTS include: This unit has no access to water. Fix by connecting a water pipe to the trouble area or building a water tower or water pump. This unit has no power. Fix by drawing some powerlines to the area or building a power plant nearby. The people who live here have no jobs. Encourage industrial or commercial growth to create more jobs. No road access. Fix by drawing a road adjacent to the cell. Q: Where are my screen-captures saved? A: The screenshots you take go into you’re My Documents folder under your C: drive. The full path for the pictures varies based upon what version of windows you are using. For example for people using windows 98: C:\My Documents\SimCity 4\Albums here. In this folder you will see folders with the names of regions on them. To view a picture from a specific region, go to that regions folder and all the pictures will be in it. All the screenshots are in .png form. To be able to view these, you will either need to open SimCity 4 and view them in your photo album there, or you can change them to a .gif or .jpg format. A freeware program that can do this for you is called pic2pic. You can get it for free Q: Why is the starting date 00? Is there a way to change the starting date of your new city? A: The game starts with the current date, as this is the day you took over as mayor. Each year after that is only a chronological marker as to how many years you have been mayor. When you are terraforming, time will also pass, unless you have it paused. With the architecture, it has been designed to show the development of your city. It was based on a turn-of-the-century Chicago style, a 1950s New York City style and a 2000 ultramodern Houston look. All 3 types can exist at once (as the city develops). These were the styles included in the game, as the designers feel these are significant examples of architecture. The design doesn’t want to be tied into a specific era. This way every city can have a unique look and feel about them. This is just as true I believe with the different forms of transport/vehicles that come on a bonus CD from certain distributors. As it can take some time for your city to develop, a certain style of car or plane would be obsolete if you restricted it to our ’real world’ time frame. Q: What does the RCI graph mean? A: The RCI graph represents an average for demands on Residential, Commercial and Industrial zones in your city. The higher the RCI bar is, the higher the need for those types of zones. This is an average however and doesn’t tell you exactly what the break down is. Sometimes one of the bars will be down, but you still have high desirability for that zone in your city. To find out what types of specific zones you need, click on the RCI bar to see an expanded version. Check this expanded graph quite often, as it is the true level of demand in your city for zones. Q: What is Demand Cap? A: Demand cap stands for demand capacity. A city starts off being able to hold a certain number of people as well as places to work. Through things like city beautification, rewards and connections to other cities, you can raise this number. If your city is no longer growing, but has all the services it needs, this generally means you have hit your demand cap. Q: I am a SimCity guru; will I dominate SimCity 4? A: SimCity 4 is drastically different from the previous versions of SimCity. You will definitely have a leg up on many of the newer players, but there is still a lot to get used to in the latest version. Q: Why do sections of my city have the no work ZOT above their buildings when sections right next to it have work? A: Possibly the EQ (education quotient) of the workers in the lot is different than the EQ required by the job. You can try to zone new areas for them to work in, or wait until their education level rises. It’s a question of whether you have enough money to support new zoning and if you would like to have these lower education jobs in your city. They normally pollute and may cause more damage to your city than having workers without jobs. Q: Is it possible to import SimCity 3000 cities into SimCity 4? A: At this point in time it is not possible. There may be a program that will be released at some point that will allow for this. Right now however, there is no such thing. Terraforming Q: Is there an easy way to reconcile edges on a map without messing everything you’ve already done up? A: The only “easy” way to reconcile edges on a map is to start in one city, change the terrain the way you like it and do not reconcile edges. Save it and go to your next city. Immediately reconcile edges on that map. This will leave your original city alone, but make the current city up-to-date. This will at a bare minimum keep you from having to go back and reconcile edges on cities you have already completed. Q: Do trees grow into forests? A: Yes. If you place a clump of trees and fast-forward time (say 30-50 years) you will see the clump grow out and become a forest. Trees grow faster if they have adequate moisture and are on reasonable altitude. Density also affects how fast (or if at all) a clump of trees will grow. The denser they are, the more chance they have at propogating. Less dense clumps of trees will die over time. Region Play Q: I’ve been hearing the term “regional play”. What does this mean? A: Regional play refers to using many different cities for separate goals. For instance, make one city dedicated to industry and commerce, and make a neighboring city just for residential. Connect them so they have road access to each other and your sims in your residential city will begin to look for work in the industrial/commercial city, and commute back. Jump back and forth between your two cities as you develop them. A more thorough analysis of neighboring city dynamics will be covered in a later article. Q: Do I have to use regional play? A: No. You are free to choose your own style of play, be it consolidating everything you need into one city, using regional play to specialize cities, or a mix of both. Q: What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using regions? A: Regional play does have its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages, to name a few, are that you can isolate pollution as well as have areas designed to provide specific types of businesses or housing. You can also choose to provide specific services, such as trash removal, power and water through neighbor deals. The drawbacks, to name a few, are that you have to work out neighbor deals if you want to have things like water in one location, power in another and garbage in yet another. You also have to switch between the cities in your region if you want them to truly grow. It’s not like being in a self-contained city where everything grows when it wants to. You actually have to keep an eye on things. Q: Should I put all RCI in one city or spread RCI across different cities? What works best? What works best? A: The game is designed to work either way. It’s really just a matter of personal preference as to which you should do. Regional play has its advantages and disadvantages, so play the way you like, this always produces the best results. Q: My neighboring connections aren’t letting me start neighbor deals! Why? A: All of the neighboring deals have a set of requirements that must be filled in order for the deal to show up. The requirements are - Trash deals Must have a road or highway from the area with trash zones in it to the place you want to remove trash from. You must have enough excess space zoned out for trash so it can take not only the cities trash where the landfill is located, but also for the neighboring city who’s importing trash. (Meaning build a decent sized landfill or incinerator, whichever you prefer) NOTE: You must have enough money to cover a 1-year supply of the service or the option for the deal will not be presented. Power Deals Must have power lines to the city that will need power. You have to have enough extra power to support both cities simultaneously. You must have enough money to cover a 1-year supply for the service. Water Deals Must have pipes to the city that requires water. You must have enough extra water to support both cities simultaneously. You must have enough money to cover a 1-year supply for the service. Q: Do I have to use my entire region to be successful? A: No! You can have one city that contains everything you need to be successful. Regional play is meant to be an option for use in the game. There are many drawbacks and advantages to using regional play. Q: If I have 2 cities in my region and I am working on one of them, is the other one still growing? A: While you are working on one city, the game uses “extrapolation” to simulate growth in the city you are not working on. This does not mean buildings are being built while you are gone, rather it means that it will assume the buildings will be built because of the increased demand next time you visit that city. When you leave one city to work on another, all information from your city is saved before you leave, and the simulation uses that saved information to extrapolate how demand might be satisfied in your currently active city. Q: Why do sections of my city have the no work ZOT above their buildings when sections right next to it have work? A: Possibly the EQ (education quotient) of the workers in the lot is different than the EQ required by the job. You can try to zone new areas for them to work in, or wait until their education level rises. It’s a question of whether you have enough money to support new zoning and if you would like to have these lower education jobs in your city. They normally pollute and may cause more damage to your city than having workers without jobs. Q: How does RCI demand work in a region? A: In region play, RCI demand is shared across all your cities. For example, if you have one city that has started demand for IHT (high tech industry), you can start a new neighboring city, zone industrial, make a road connection to your first city and high-tech will start to pop up in your new city, satisfying the demand of the city that it is connected to. Using this concept you can create ’bedroom communities’: wait for your residential demand to climb in one city, then start a neighboring city, connect with to your first city by road, and zone residential and watch as your sims move in to live in your new city and commute to the other city to work. Q: If my sim commutes to another city to work, how does it determine commute times? A: When you create a connection to another city, say, by road, and you do not immediately go to the other city to connect the remaining ’stub’ to that city’s road structure, the simulation will attempt to estimate the commute time to the work place in the other city and add it on the exiting commute time. This estimate will often by inordinately high, giving you the result of long commute times. To remedy this, make sure that the connection ’stub’ in your other city is connected to the road structure. The simulator will then be able to recall more accurately the average commute times. Business Deals Q: What are business deals? A: Business deals are offered to you when you are financially in the red for extended periods of time. Aside from providing a fairly lucrative monthly income, business deals may also have the following effects, mostly negative: contribute to air and water pollution, radiation and garbage, increase commercial demand as well as crime rate, affects desirability for all sectors, and decreases your mayor rating. Q: Should I accept every business deal that comes along? A: No, you should carefully pick and choose which business deals you will take. Any business deal that is in red is a negative deal, meaning in general that it will give you money, but has a negative affect on surrounding areas as well as your mayor rating. Q: How do I get the Casino business deal? A: The casino business deal requires that you have enacted the Legalize Gambling ordinance. Warning: If you repeal the ordinance, your casino will be automatically demolished. (If you want, save yourself the cost of bulldozing the casino (§15,000) by repealing the legalize gambling ordinance). Q: Do I need to run roads, water pipes and power lines to these buildings in order for me to get the money? A: No. Once you place any of the business deal buildings, you start getting money right away. However, in order for these buildings to help supply your city with jobs, you need roads connected to them. Providing water to them will reduce the structure’s flammability (roads also ensure that firetrucks can get there if needed). Q: What effects on my city do business deals have? A: The following chart details the available business deals, what they provide, and their impact on your city: Business Deals Size, IncomePre-RequisitesPositive Effects Negative EffectsArmy Base (12x12) §350/mont your funds are less than §7000 funds less than 40% less than three previous years dedicated expenses greater than income population greater than 2000Jobs for R§ sims, Increase Commercial desirability Lowers Mayor Rating, lowers residential and high-tech desirability, adds to water and air pollution, increases crime.Casino (6x3) §300/month Legalize Gambling Ordinance enacted total poluation greater than 24,000Creates commercial demand and adds commercial desirability Lowers Mayor Rating, lowers residential and high-tech desirability, increases crime. Drains power.Federal Prison (4x4) §250/month funds less than §7000 funds dropped by half in last 2 years expenses greater than income population greater than 5000Provides jobs for R§ sims Lowers Mayor Rating, lowers residential, commercial and high-tech desirability, increases crime.Missile Range (4x4) §450/month funds less than §1000 funds dropped by at least 20% in last 6 months expenses greater than income population greater than 500None Lowers Mayor Rating, lowers residential, commercial and high-tech desirability, high air and water pollution, chance of Missile Misfire Disaster (not good)Toxic Waste Dump (4x4) §400/month funds less than -§1000 expenses greater than incomeNone Lowers Mayor Rating, lowers residential, commercial and high-tech desirability, high radiation, lowers air and water pollution, very flammable. Even dirty industries don’t want to be near it! Zoning What good are farms? What do the different types of zones (Co, Cs, etc) mean? Can landfills be de-zoned, rezoned or demolished? Sometimes when I re-zone areas, it doesn’t change all the zones. Is there a way to change them all easily? How can I get high-wealth citizens to move in? How far will people travel to get to work? How much beautification do I need in my city? If my zoned area is full of buildings, should I zone more? Why are there no big buildings in my city even though I’ve zoned high-density? After my city runs for a few years, my industry seems to be abandoned. What is causing this?Should I use auto-streets or lay my own roads when I zone?Some of the zones I have created are empty. What is causing this?How do I determine how long a freight trip will be from an industrial zone?Will low density hold only low class, or will they hold others as well?Why are my high-wealth buildings being taken over by low-wealth sims?Budget In my budget, I see §, §§ and §§§. What do they mean? What should I set my taxes to? What are the effects of overfunding?What are the effects of underfunding? Transit Q: No one is using my bus stops and/or subways! What am I doing wrong? A: In order for busses and trains- and even subways for that matter – to work, you need to place them in locations that are congested with traffic. In general, it is a wise decision to place these mass-transit buildings on major roads that lead from residential to commercial or industrial districts. Remember, Sims riding on these will have to walk after they leave the station. Place them so they don’t have to walk too far, or they will not get used. Q: My train tracks won’t turn, why not? A: The train tracks are unable to turn on a dime. In order for you to make a turn, the turn must be gradual. There are two ways of doing this. Make the tracks go where you want them to end up on each side of the turn. Then, from one of the ends of the track, click and drag a new track to the end of the other, this will create a turn. Make gradual turns as you go, click and drag to a 45-degree angle and let go. Do this twice and you have a turn. Q: How do you get a highway cloverleaf to work? A: A simple way to get a highway cloverleaf to work is by deciding where you would like the two highways to intersect. Make one of the two highways go entirely through. (Fig. 1) To complete the cloverleaf, start building the second highway over the first. If you have not gone far enough on one side or the other, it will show up red. (Fig. 2) Make sure you get enough of the highway so it will turn blue. (Fig. 3) After you release, it will ask if you want a cloverleaf. (Fig. 4) Q: My traffic is horrible and I have nothing but roads, how can I lighten traffic? A: The only way to lighten traffic at this point is by placing mass transit services in your city. These include highways, subways, trains and busses. To use these effectively, you must place them in highly congested areas. People that take a bus for instance, will be walking on foot after they get off the bus. As a result, be sure to place all mass transit items in locations people will not have to walk far from to get where they want to go. Q: How do I build onramps to the highway? A: There are two ways of going about this. One is to simply place the onramp next to a highway in your city. When the ramp turns green, you are able to place it. The other way, which may be easier, is to make a road that goes under the highway where you would like the onramp to go. Once it is created, it will ask you if you want to add onramps. Click on accept and the onramps will be placed for you. Q: When should I consider adding highways and/or subways? A: These are great ways of lowering the traffic in your city. The drawback to these is that both of them cost a lot. Once you have a large surplus of funds in your city, these are certainly viable options to lowering the traffic. As a result, the best time to place these is later on in your city’s lifetime. When you have quite a few residents (no less than 100,000 normally) it might be a good idea to start adding these forms of transportation. Highways should be in highly used areas as a main connection. Normally it’s best to have these span your city to give access to central locations. Highways should also be used to connect your cities across your region. The subway, on the other hand, can be placed throughout the city in many locations. It is a lot easier to place the subway, as only one square above ground needs to be used to place a stop, while the rest of the track goes underground. As a result, if you can afford it, subway is a great alternative to connecting neighbors as well as providing transportation within your city. City Services Q: What is a service? A: A city service is anything from an elementary school to a landfill to a power plant. These are all things your city needs in order to function and thrive. Each of these services cost money, be careful what you put in. Be sure you have enough cash to cover the expenses before taking any action. When placing services, especially at the start of your game, immediately adjust the funding slider (use the query tool) so you are not wasting money on unnecessary resources. Q: Where should I put a water treatment plant? A: Water treatment plants should be used when your water pollution starts to get out of control, or if you just want to clean up. Put them anywhere where there is high water pollution and near water towers and pumps, as this structure acts as a water purifier and has a very large radius. With enough water treatment plants placed throughout your city, you can clean up all your water pollution. Q: Where should I put water pumps? A: The further away from pollution they are, the more efficient they are. If they are kept away from pollution entirely, they will last longer and produce more. Q: What are the parks good for? A: Parks, as well as other city beautification items are good for quite a few things. They are able to increase your population limits as well as add desirability to your surrounding zones. Parks are also able to reduce pollution in surrounding areas. It is not a bad idea to place them near dirty industries, as this can increase the desirability since pollution is lower. Q: Elementary school or high school? A: You do need both high schools as well as elementary schools. Once people leave elementary, some choose to continue their education in high school. You’ll also need colleges eventually. In order to get high-tech industry as well as better jobs/higher class citizens in your city, you’ll eventually need all forms of education. (Library, museum, college, high school, elementary school, even the university when you get the chance.) Education is very important if you want to eventually develop clean high tech industry. Q: Some of my services have no range of affect. Why is this? A: Museums, colleges and universities have no real range. They affect the entire city. The same goes for main library, major art museums and opera houses. Q: I have a ton of wind power plants, when is it too many? A: After 5 windmills, you will be spending more a month than a fully funded coal power plant would cost, and will not be producing as much power. As a result, if you get to this point, it is a good idea to blow them up and put in a more cost-efficient way to power your city. Of course, a coal power plant produces far more pollution. Q: Should I put water funding down when my pump is not running at full capacity? A: You should never lower water funding as a rule as you’ll tend to suffer more than you’ll save. When you reduce the spending on water services, you are reducing the spending on pipe maintenance. This will lead to water pipes bursting all over your city and reduce the effectiveness of the pipes providing water to buildings. It’s best to keep your water funding at 100% all the time, regardless of the amount of water used. Q: Do I really need to cover every square inch of the map with fire and police stations? A: It is definitely not necessary to cover every part of your map with fire and police coverage. You may not even have any. This will lead to problems though, and quickly. At the bare minimum you will want a fire station in a central location. Fires will break out in your city quite often and without proper protection, you will get burned. It’s a good idea to wait until your first fire breaks out in your city to place a fire station. This way you are not paying a monthly fee for something your city doesn’t need yet. Eventually crime levels and lack of fire protection will halt the growth of your city. Put them in only when you can afford them, ie. not when you first start your city. Q: My service workers are striking! Why? A: If people are going on strike in your city, it is because you have not provided enough funding to support the need. Query the building on strike and increase funding to stop the strike. For example, doctors will strike if there are more patients than their funding will allow them to handle. Increase funding so that the maximum number of patients is a bit more than the current amount of patience, and eventually, they’ll quite down. Q: How can I tell if I am using all of my power/water/garbage? A: If you click on the graph button, you will be able to click on power, water and garbage to see how much capacity you have at the moment, as well as how much of the service you are using. If you click on the power button to see how much power you are using and the usage is very close to the capacity, it’s either time to increase funding on power, or time to add a new power plant. Q: Do power plants ever die like they did in previous versions of SimCity? A: Power plants can blow up just like they did in the previous versions of SimCity. They blow up for different reasons in SimCity 4 though. As time goes on, the effectiveness of buildings such as power, water and garbage disposal will decrease. The better funded the building is, the longer it will take for the effectiveness to go down. If the effectiveness gets very low, you are spending a lot of money on something that is not doing a lot of good for you. It’s best to blow it up and build a new one that will produce more for the same monthly cost. If your buildings ever catch on fire, they may explode, and in the case of the nuclear power plant, this will lead to a city-ending event. A bad thing. Q: Should I start off with large or small fire/police stations, and clinics or hospitals? A: Some people think small is the way to start off, and later advance to large. Others think that starting off with large will save you in the long run. Well, the truth to the matter is that both do work. Depending on how you zone your city in the start should determine if you should start with large or small services. If you have zoned large areas of low-density, it’s probably going to be most cost-effective to cover it all with one large service instead of a few smaller ones. On the other hand, if you start of with smaller zones, it is most beneficial to build small services. Be sure to use the radius of the service to the max. Avoid placing a service where its radius isn’t being used (i.e. at the edge of the map), as this lowers its cost-effectiveness. Q: Where is the best place to put an airport? A: Airports help increase your commercial demand cap, as well as increase traffic in surrounding areas. Since you would like for your commercial zones to have traffic, it’s a wise idea to place the airport relatively close to commercial zones, or easily accessible by road. Keep in mind that airports generate pollution, so you might want to surround it with trees or some parks here and there to keep the pollution down. Zoning Q: What good are farms? A: Farms create food for the simcitizens, jobs, cargo to ship off to neighbor cities for money, and yes the flip side is they pollute the water, lower the land value and there is no tax bracket for them. A good idea might be to make a neighboring city on a small map mostly farms. You will get a farmer’s market after a while, which will provide increased health for your sims, as they eat natural food. Q: What do the different types of zones mean? I keep seeing CO and ID, but I have no clue what they mean. A: Here’s a break-down of the terminology: IA – Industry Agriculture (low wealthindustry) ID – Industry Dirty (low wealth industry) IM – Industry Manufacturing (middle wealth industry) IT – Industry High-Tech (high wealth industry) Co– Commercial Office (medium and high wealth commercial) Cs– Commercial Service (low, medium and high wealth commercial) R§ - Low Wealth Housing R§§ - Medium Wealth Housing R§§§ - High Wealth Housing Q: Can landfills be de-zoned, rezoned or demolished? A: In order to de-zone, re-zone a landfill area, you must wait for garbage to disappear (decompose). A quick way to get them empty is to erase the road leading to them. If there is no way to get to the landfill, they can’t put trash there. You are unable to demolish landfills while they are full. Q: Sometimes when I re-zone areas, it doesn’t change all the zones. Is there a way to change them all easily? A: If you change to your zone overlay, you can easily re-zone areas. It will show you exactly where you are re-zoning as well as give you a good idea of what types of zones you already have. Q: How can I get high-wealth citizens to move in? A: In order for high-wealth citizens to want to move to your city, you need to have high levels of education as well as health which creates demand for higher wealth citizens. In SimCity 4, there is a direct correlation between wealth and education - essentially, the lower wealth citizens begin their lives with lower education quotient, than more wealthier sims. (However, low-wealth sims can still become highly educated, but takes more time.) You will also need places for them to work. To be sure you can satisfy their work requirements, zone new areas for them as demand for high-wealth commerce and industry rises. Be sure to zone them in the most desirable places. Check your overlays to see desirable areas. Q: How far will people travel to get to work? A: They will travel quite a ways to get to work. The further away they have to travel though, the less desirable the area is to live in however, and eventually they will not want to live there at all if the commute gets too bad. To check the commute time, query any residential building. The shorter, the more desirable. Commuter trains may help alleviate long commute areas. Q: How much beautification do I need in my city? A: This is something that is left up to the mayor. A general rule-of-thumb though is that you don’t need it until later. City beautification increases the desirability of areas and increases your demand cap for your city. Each time you add a park, playground, plaza or any other type of city beautification, you are spending money that could be used on more zoning. As a result, be careful when placing these items. Make sure you have enough money and enough demand to justify the cost of building the item, as well as the monthly maintenance. Beautification will be very necessary to attract commercial office and hightech industries later on. Q: If my zoned area is full of buildings, should I zone more? A: In general, it is a good idea to expand your city with more zones. If your city is already fairly large, then maybe it is a better idea to get more use out of your current zones. Re-zone the areas from low to medium density to get more money out of the same amount of space. Be sure to have a lot of your map covered by low-density before changing to medium density, as low density makes the most money per person, giving you the biggest taxes possible. Always zone low-density everything when you start. For example, there is absolutely no benefit to zoning high density industrial, until your industrial population (jobs) reaches 2447. Q: Why are there no big buildings in my city even though I’ve zoned high-density? A: Just because an area is zoned for high density does not mean the demand for larger buildings is there. Your city will take quite some time to need high-density zones in it and as a result, it’s best to start with low-density and gradually increase as your city grows. Even a medium-density zone can hold large skyscrapers holding upwards of 2,000 people in it. Before you start zoning for high-density, be sure your city needs it and your services are well funded. Q: After my city runs for a few years, my industry seems to be abandoned. What is causing this? A: In many cases, your industry is being abandoned because your citizens EQ (or Education Quotient) has risen. As a result they will want to move up to a higher-wealth job (manufacturing or high-tech) which could leave much of your dirty industries abandoned. If you can afford it, it will benefit you to demolish these buildings as it will not only free up space for the new industries, but also create new demand for that area. Q: Should I use auto-streets or lay my own roads when I zone? A: There are benefits and drawbacks to doing this. If you lay out your streets at first and then place zones, you are able to set the size of your zones as well as keep traffic problems down somewhat. (Since you can avoid the unnecessary intersections occasionally created by auto-streets). The drawback is that it takes a lot of time and effort to plan correctly. You’ll also have to ensure that each lot is within reach of a road. When laying the zone, be sure to watch how it’s zoning. Sometimes you will need to change the area you start/finish at to make all the areas of the new zone touch the road. If you zoom in to one of the closest two views, it is much easier to see how your zones are being laid out and pick exactly how big or small you want the zones to be. Q: Some of the zones I have created are empty. What is causing this? A: The desirability of the zone is low, and as a result no one wants to build there. Check to ensure the zone has proper service coverage. If it does, try adding in a few things like parks to the area. This will increase the desirability of the area and new people should start moving in shortly afterwards. Q: How do I determine how long a freight trip will be from an industrial zone? A: Industrial zones have to freight their cargos to one of the following – neighbor connection, freight train station, seaports and in some cases airports. The closer the industry is to one of these types of connections to the outside world, the shorter the freight trip. Q: Will low density hold only low class, or will they hold others as well? A: Low density, just as any other density, can hold all classes. Low, medium and upper class citizens will move into and work in low, medium and high-density zones. Q: Why are my high-wealth buildings being taken over by low-wealth sims? A: The most proabably cause is reduction in desirability. Buildings tend to degrade when desirability decreases, rich sims move out, low-wealth sims move in. (low-wealth sims will live anywhere). Check your desirability and make sure your NIMBYs are far away from your affluent neighborhoods. Add ammenities to increase desirability, check for things like commute time, or traffic noise which also reduces desirability. Budget Q: In my budget, I see §, §§ and §§§. What do they mean? A: § = Low-wealth citizens §§ = Medium-wealth citizens §§§ = High-wealth citizens Q: What should I set my taxes to? A: You can set your taxes as high as 9% without lowering demand for your zones. As your city gets larger, this number decreases. Any number higher than this will decrease demand, while and number lower will increase demand. The more drastic the change, the more drastic the demand change. Use taxes to make money, but remember, they have a minimum effect of 3 game months even if you change your mind immediately after. So don’t expect to be able to make some quick cash, and then reduce tax rates without hurting demand. Q: What are the effects of overfunding? A: Overfunding is when your funding slider bar is beyond the white mark. Be cautious what you overfund as it may just end up being a waste of money. For most buildings, overfunding will slightly increase effectiveness by about 10% (police stations, fire stations) or provide increased capacity (schools, health clinics). Q: What are the effects of underfunding? A: Underfunding is when your funding slider is before the white mark. In most cases, under-funding will cause no harm if the structure’s usage does not exceed its capacity (example, underfunding a power plant will save you money but decrease its lifespan). For other buidings (schools, police stations, fire stations) that have a radius effect, underfunding will decrease the size of the radius. If an underfunded building begins to have more volume than the funding capacity will allow, strikes will break and your workers will stop working until you’ve rectified the problem. Part 2 By: Mazer327 Please PM STomnibus with any questions related to this article. Transit Systems No one is using my bus stops and/or subways! What am I doing wrong?My train tracks won’t turn, why not?How do you get a highway cloverleaf to work?My traffic is horrible and I have nothing but roads, how can I lighten traffic?How do I build onramps to the highway?When should I consider adding highways and/or subways?Services What is a service? Where should I put a water treatment plant? Where should I put water pumps? What are the parks good for? Elementary school or high school? Some of my services have no range of affect. Why is this? I have a ton of wind power plants, when is it too many? Should I put water funding down when my pump is not running at full capacity? Do I really need to cover every square inch of the map with fire and police stations? My services workers are striking! Why? How can I tell if I am using all of my power/water/garbage? Do power plants ever die like they did in previous versions of SimCity? Should I start off with large or small fire/police stations, and clinics or hospitals?Where is the best place to put an airport?

Hello Everyone! Our MOTM/EOTM banner artwork is great, but it's getting a bit stale... we are now on our third round using the same banners. I tried my best to come up with something fresh, but... This is awful in every way. It doesn't even use proper phrasing :\ I just don't have the skills. So we're asking you, the community, to come up with our new banners. We need one for this May, and then every month afterwards... including next year if you want to go that far. As far as what the banners should look like, each banner must measure 500x200, and must have a matching 150x112 banner to be used in the news item on the Homepage. The larger banner must include the text "Member of the Month [Month Name]". The smaller one can just display the month. The rest is up to you, but we ask that you theme the banner with something associated with the month in question. This "something" can be regionally known, or known worldwide (just don't make it too obscure... we want people to 'get it'). We will leave this thread open for as long as people care to contribute to it. Each month we will select a banner and it's author will be credited in the awards ceremony, and will receive a small prize. Thanks Everyone! -The Admins

Hello Everyone! We hope you're enjoying the upgrade... a lot of hard work was put into it. We know that there are still some wrinkles to iron out and we could use everyone's help in reporting any bugs or issues that you might encounter with the new site. Please include your Browser and Operating system information when reporting an issue, along with any other information you think might be important. Thanks! P.S. We're aware that we already had a Bugs/Issues thread in here, but it was abducted by the aliens. UPDATE 15 July 2015: The new ST8 bugs report thread can be found here: Simtropolis 8.0 - Bugs & Issues Report Thread

In an effort to reduce the amount of stickies in this forum, we've combined several of the threads that served as "Guidelines and Friendly Reminders". You can find the site rules in their entirety here. Friendly Reminder about PMs If you feel you are receiving inappropriate PMs requesting personal information, please forward them straight to an administrator. Anyone found to be harassing others for any such information will be subjected to a permanent vacation from the community. Signatures and Avatars Reminder a. Signatures may have a maximum of 10 lines of text which includes blank lines and images. b. Signature images are permitted and are to be a maximum of 300 x 50 pixels. Multiple images are acceptable, provided the total combined dimensions of all images do not exceed 300 x 50 pixels. c. The size of text in signatures must not exceed the default font size. Text may be smaller. d. Formatting tools and color should be used appropriately. No one appreciates an eyesore. e. Avatars and signatures may not display copyrighted content, or contain offensive material. f. Animations are allowed but the staff reserves the right to remove animations that are causing problems.

Welcome, Lilbrownsuga5. Congratulations on winning. Let's sit down. When did you join Simtropolis? 16 may 2004(a day before my 14th birthday). Why did you join Simtropolis? It seemed to be a good place to be and my brother was here. Did you ever expect to win the MOTM? No, never i was suprised to hear i did. Why did you think you were nominated for the MOTM? I guess people felt i deserved it. Will winning the MOTM inspire you to do more for the community? Possibly, because i think someone who wins it would do more and i feel "i don't do that". What do you do outside of Sim City 4 and Simtropolis in your free time? Hanging out with my friends and just be normal. What are your favorite Simtropolis moments? When i'm having a good and fun conversation with my friends in chat. Do you have a job? Haha i'm currently looking for my first one. If you were stuck on a deserted island with one Simtropolis member, who would it be? Haha thats a hard decison, probably mikeaut1 because i think he would make it fun. What has been your main contributions to the site? They have told me being an active and excellent chatter and my Sim Diary. Do you have anything else that you would like to share with us? Not really other than i'm very happy that i won this and wasn't expecting it. Thanks for joining us Lilbrownsuga5, and congratulations again for your award!

Maxis has released the first video in a video-blog series entitled "Insider's Look: GlassBox Game Engine." It seems like we've heard a lot about the engine since SimCity was announced, but Dan Moskowitz, Gameplay Lead for SimCity takes the time in this video to walk us through some specific examples of what the engine actually does: As Dan notes, the video isn't intended to be representative of the game's final graphics, so it's important to keep that in mind when watching. Still, the video does show off some gameplay aspects that we can hopefully look forward to when the game launches. I was particular drawn towards the ability to customize and upgrade certain buildings, such as a fire station, from within the game itself.The extent of possible customization is unclear at this point, but any customization at all will be nice for us non BATers who still want to change how certain buildings look and function. A quick glimpse at terraforming and zoning abilities look promising as well. The main purpose of this video is to show off the Glassbox engine, and it seems every bit as powerful as we have been led to believe so far. As the video explains, the simulation consists of several interacting aspects, from resources like coal and workers, to resource-carrying "agents" like pedestrians and vehicles. All of the effects and animations are directly affected by the simulation rules, so nothing that you see is without a purpose. Check out the video below, and stay tuned to Maxis's developer blog and Simtropolis for the game updates.

Please PM Coyote777 for more information about this tutorial. Overpass Tutorial! Are your Sims complaining about waiting at that traffic light or railroad crossing? Want to build an overpass and make it look decent? Here's how: What you need: The Hole Digging Lots and the NAM 1. Here we have your basic road/railroad crossing: (keep in mind, this tutorial does not only apply to road/railroad overpasses, it could be any form of transit that has a NAM On Slope Puzzle Piece) 2. First we bulldoze what we want to put onto an overpass: 3. Then we select the Ground Lifter from the Hole Digging Lots: 4. Then plop the lot at least TWO tiles away from what we want to build over: 5. Then raise the Ground Lifter lot. In this example build the road up to the railroad, do not go over it, because it will raise the land the railroad is on too, and it will not look right: 6. Bulldoze the road and lifter lots. The high point where the lifter lot was should be one square away from the railroad, build one section of road here, then another moving away from the railroad. Do nothing with the space between the railroad and road, it will mess up the height if you put anything there. 7. Next, bulldoze the road squares and build a railroad up to the high point, which should be one square away from the railroad: 8. Bulldoze the railroads you have just built and you are left with this: 9. Next, select the ON SLOPE PUZZLE PIECE from the NAM, and place them thusly: 10. Place the remaining puzzle pieces and connect them to the road: Now you have your overpass, but it looks kind of bland. Let's give it some eye-candy! 11. I sometimes use the Under Bridge scenery on my overpasses: Sometimes you get a weird visual glitch, but it still looks good! 13. And finish up with the walls, trees, and whatever else you want and you're done! That's how we get a good looking overpass! Please PM Coyote777 for more information about this tutorial.

This tutorial will quickly show you how to recover your SimCity 4 activation code, should you lose it. Skill Level: Intermediate. This process is fairly simple, but dangerous if not followed exactly. **Editing anything in the Registry could result in messing up the operating system enough that it cannot be recovered through any means whatsoever. Never edit the Registry under any conditions unless absolutely necessary and you know exactly what you're doing. To begin click the Start Button, and choose Run. When the Run Dialog appears, type "regedit" into the text field, and click "OK". This will start up the registry editor. *Note, this tool is very powerful. Deleting or changing anything in this program will cause your programs to either not run, or run with errors. I will take no responsibility for such errors, continue at your own risk. I repeat again, editing anything in the Registry could result in messing up the operating system enough that it cannot be recovered through any means whatsoever. Never edit the Registry under any conditions unless absolutely necessary and you know exactly what you're doing. Now then, we must find and expand some of these files, in order to find the EA Registration Key. Expand the tree by clicking the boxes with a "+" sign in them. First expand My Computer, then HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then SOFTWARE. You should now see a complete list of all of your installed programs (or software) and they're important information stored in the registry. It is highly advised that you stick to the tutorial and do not go into any of these folders, or delete any. Doing so may cause some of your programs to work incorrectly. After you have the software key expanded, find "Electronic Arts". Expand that key, and locate the ergc key. Click on it, and notice to the right, that your installation ID is displayed there. it should be about 20 digits long, but it is exactly the same as the ID you entered when you first installed SimCity 4. You should now have recovered your installation ID. If you have any questions or concerns about the content of this article, please send a Personal Message to .

Congrats to all of the winners!

I got the expansion, and I have been having quite a bit of fun with it. It's a bit pricey but it does add a lot. I don't like that spies are awarded instead of built/purchased, but the espionage system is still fun

We had a chance to catch up with the guys behind Synekism, a city simulation game focused on dynamically generated content. Check out our last interview with them here, and read on to see how things have progressed. 1. So, it's been a year since we last talked to you, what's the state of Synekism today, compared to one year ago? Unfortunately (or fortunately), since May of 2011 we've mostly done research. Of the work we did do, most was code sanitation and only some went towards user-visible features. Our feature creep has therefore turned into a feature drought. That said, I think it was a necessary slowdown, with the thinking-to-doing ratio almost ready to favour doing. On a factual user-visible level, we've added lot density controls, a ray-traced screenshot feature, camera alignment controls, data maps for density and land value, a new zoning layout which attempts to keep lots perpendicular to their road, and buildings no longer take up the entire lot. Synekism, however, is still very much in the early alpha stage. We've also lost a team member bringing the count down to two. Nothing to worry about though. 2.What kind of traction have you picked up in the community? And has the feedback you've received to date shaped your project in any way? Our website host hasn't complained yet about bandwidth spikes but I'd say we've gained a fair amount of attention, especially considering the limited state of Synekism. We'd like to especially thank those few very persistent players that have provided most of the feedback. It was no viral social trend but I think we did ok and it seems to be stable. Feedback has definitely shaped Synekism in the past year. The best example was the multiplayer feature. We didn't even finish it before we were told it was NOT something we should focus on. It was a "cool" feature that people would "try" but would never become an integral part of the game. However, most of the feedback that improves Synekism at the moment is bug discovery since there isn't much depth yet. I should add that besides feedback we got a tonne of suggestions and ideas that will certainly shape Synekism in the future. A Work in Progress: Buildings in Synekism Density Map 3. So you relented on the multiplayer feature from the community feedback. How did you see multiplayer playing out? What were the high-level mechanics or concepts you had at the time? We basically wanted to make it possible for two or more people to work on the same city at the same time. This would have been in real time. When your friend deleted all the roads (because he wasn't your friend) they would disappear from your copy of the city as well and in that instant. It would have been similar to a real-time strategy multiplayer game. The primary inspiration for our little multiplayer excitement was that we used to compete in SimCity, the challenge usually being first to a million population or something arbitrary like that. In retrospect, our little skirmishes were not a major part of our city simulation fun, and even so, it was just as much fun without a network connection as it would have been with it. Maybe we'll explore multiplayer later on but for now we're sticking to single player. A Zoomed-Out Look at Zones in Synekism 4. Did the announcement of the new SimCity have any effect on your development (goals, direction)? We obviously can't compete with a giant like SimCity head-on. It wasn't so much a problem when we were competing with a 9 year old game but -1 year olds present some challenge. So, yes, we're still processing the news and changing our long term priorities accordingly. The goal is to further define the unique aspects of Synekism, like procedural buildings, and introduce additional fundamental differences into the mix. It might blow up in our face but we might as well take advantage of the "indie" development freedoms. The announcement was also partly responsible for our recent break of tradition and pause from monthly releases. We'll be working over the summer to address some of the goals stated above and will return on September 1, 2012. But written updates should continue throughout. 5. We have been learning how GlassBox is an "agent-based" simulation. Can you tell us a bit about Synekism's intended simulation engine and how it might be the same or different? I think I'm just at the point now where I know enough computer science to partially grasp the magnitude (just the magnitude) of GlassBox's complexity. This is clearly something a few years old with parents way smarter than myself. Based just on that I can assure you Synekism's engine will not be similar if it tried. That said, one of the concepts we're playing with and will try to prototype over the summer is planet-sized city areas. Not regions, but continuous, no-loading-screens, buildable, planet-sized areas. Keep in mind I had the words "playing with", "try to", and "prototype" in the same sentence. My point is that we're going macro and agent-based simulation will probably not work well on the scales we're after. Therefore, Synekism will focus on statistically driven simulations. The details are still blurry right now though (as in, we have no clue). 6. Sounds ambitious, we'd love to know what you've come up with over the summer. So, I noticed in March you guys started a company, Idimoris. To me, it looks like an indication that Synekism might be moving out of the side-project and into a more full-time venture, is that accurate? Is the company being backed? Any plans on building the team further? Idimoris was actually started before we launched. It was just the name of our "registered" general partnership as we didn't have the money nor was it worth incorporating at the time. It's still a partnership today (with one less partner). The website came about because someone generously volunteered his design talent. It was also not a bad idea to have something at www.idimoris.com since Synekism's publisher meta data says: Idimoris. Unfortunately, none of us can commit to Synekism full-time for the next couple of years due to either full-time work or school, because we are our own and only backers, so it will technically remain a side-project. This might also be the place to address a common suggestion we get which is to put the project up on Kickstarter. It's a valid course of action and we might get enough to not starve while we work on Synekism full-time for a while. The plan would be to get Synekism up to what we call "pay-worthiness" faster and start living off the project. However, and to be honest, as much as I love this genre and this project, I also like my full-time (9 to 5) job which not only gives me better odds against starvation but also exposes me (having just graduated) to seasoned industry talent that easily carries over to the Synekism project. My partner is in a similar position. Therefore, accepting any financial backing right now would be inappropriate since it won't really speed up development. Regarding the team, unless we come across a really dedicated programmer or designer that would be fine working for the sake of the work alone, I don't think it will grow within the perceivable future. Real growth would have to wait until we have a more solid direction. 7. And lastly, what are some of your goals over the next few months? Anything else you'd like to add, share or hint at? Thanks for taking the time, we'll catch up with you again! Well, both of us will have some serious time off this summer (like a month) and our work load in general has just halved so we hope to get some serious work done. The planet idea I mentioned earlier is our first tackle as we'll try to see how crazy it really is. The planet push will also force a new save file. We're actually looking at adopting a serious database engine for our saves (probably Firebird). The UI needs to be re-done as we have too many short-cut keys and often avoid new feature because they would require UI changes. Our graphics engine also needs some attention. Forcing you to stare at boxes is just cruel without so much as shadows or anti-aliasing. These are some of the main goals for the September re-launch and the rest of the year but I cannot commit to anything at the moment until I get to work and see which of them are insane and which are border-line insane to implement. Moving forward, we will of course post updates on the 1st of each month on our progress. We haven't done as much in the past year as I had hoped. I wish I can promise 2012 will be better but I've learned my lesson with promises like that. All I can say is that the project is alive and well and that I'm as curious about where we'll be by the end of the summer as anyone else. Thank you for this opportunity! We are humbled. Additional Screenshots:

As an introvert... I'm not likely to put myself into new social situations. The anonymity of the internet makes it easier to interact with other people. I also like the casual pace of conversations on a message board... there isn't a need to come up with something to say right away (I hate telephone calls ).

Reopened after cleaning up some personal attacks and off topic responses. To those who lost posts with relevant content, I'm sorry... you are free to re-reply as long as we can keep the discussion on topic, and remember to be respectful to our fellow members.

click the title of the article to go to the awards ceremony

Congrats to this Month's winners... well deserved!

The award ceremony is no longer visible since the site upgrade took place. We might one day put a listing up in the Omnibus, but that's kind of low on our list (unless someone out there wants to do it for us...) In the meantime, a listing of every site award (MOTM, Trixies, etc..) can be found here.

I was drawn in by the front-page feature... stunning work!

Hey Everyone, We may have an opportunity to forward some questions to Maxis in the near future, and this thread is for compiling a list of questions that you'd ask the SimCity development team. We encourage the use of the "rep" button in the corner of each post as a way of voting for that question. In theory, the highest voted questions will be selected and sent to Maxis. Try to be creative when coming up with these, and refrain from asking anything that has already been answered either in an article or the Reddit AMA. Cheers! -Kevin Agree! Edit: Hey everyone, welcome to my post I agree with the above -Kevin

Locked until next time... we're compiling questions... hopefully you'll all see the results of this soon!

A beautiful city... it's clear you've put a lot of time into this. Looking forward to more

Excellent job with some beautiful RHW work that I would never have the patience for

Sometimes people slip through the cracks... it's not intentional